POWER AND CONFLICT
Extract from The Prelude
Nature overturns the young speaker’s self-assurance and remains powerful inside his imagination.
Read the accessible text and study notes
What happens?
A youthful boating adventure becomes an unsettling encounter with nature.
Big idea
Nature overturns the young speaker’s self-assurance and remains powerful inside his imagination.
“an act of stealth”
Moral diction — The speaker recognises secrecy and wrongdoing even before the apparently pleasurable adventure begins.
“Went heaving through the water like a swan;”
Simile — The youthful rower imagines graceful command of the water.
“a huge peak, black and huge,”
Repetition — Scale overwhelms the earlier graceful self-image.
“a trouble to my dreams.”
Psychological aftermath — The event continues after physical danger has passed.
Form
An autobiographical verse extract in unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse.
Context
Wordsworth’s Romantic writing explores the mind’s relationship with nature. The extract appears in the posthumous 1850 Prelude.
Compare
Storm on the Island: nature overturns human security. Ozymandias: limits of power.
Voice, tone and feelings
Taking the boat · Secretly excited — The apparent adventure begins with confidence mixed with awareness of wrongdoing.
Mountain encounter · Awed and afraid — A peak appears to pursue the rower; the landscape seems capable of independent action.
After returning · Disturbed and reflective — The adult narrator describes an enduring change in the child’s thoughts and dreams.
Recall
Where does the speaker’s sense of control begin to fail?
Read the full poem in your own AQA anthology. Anthology information and source.